How Absurd, 11
by LamiaBats
Summary: Jareth reflects, and hopes that Sarah is reflecting too, because things aren't quite right in the Kingdom. Rated M for dark themes, adult content, and language.
1. Chapter 1

_((A/N: I hope some of you that used to read this fic have found me here... I cannot log into my old user account, and Support hasn't gotten back to me on it in a long time. I decided to painstakingly repost each chapter and the new ones I've written under this account. I've made some improvements here and there as I went, too! Please enjoy.))_

"Sarah..."

He sighed her name, and the reverberation of his despair cast a misty chill over the dying land. He knew she still heard him, always there, singing songs in her mind.

"Everything I've done, I've done for you."

"Saraaaahhhh..."

He wondered if she were there, touching the mirror as he had so often seen her do... yes, he still went Aboveground to watch her from time to time, just to catch a glimpse of her. He watched her in his crystals when the magics were good, but he had grown so weary.

"How you've turned my world, you precious thing."

How deeply humiliating that a mortal girl could reduce him to this. How absurd, to have offered everything only to have... _nothing_...

'I move the stars for no one.'

He wanted her here, He wanted her to never return. He wanted her as his Queen, sitting becrowned beside him, sitting straight up with her lovely pink lips parted slightly in a smile, perhaps entertained by a frolicking goblin. He wanted her too as his slave, degraded, sitting at his feet and begging with her large doe eyes, pleading, completely under his control. He wanted her to live with him, and to die without him. He wanted... he wanted...

"Sarah!" He whisper-cried in desperation, the name spilling from him as a venomous curse and a reverent prayer at once.

How she had grown. It was so short a time here... time ran differently than in the Above. He begun to worry, because less and less would she stand at her mirror now, and no "I wish" had danced off of her lips in years of her time. Less and less would she stare into the depths of her reflection, warm in the knowledge that she knew it's secrets. Less and less would she turn and stop at the sound of his wings flicking, slicing through wintry ait like so many feathered blades. He was frightened. She was forgetting, and he had never needed her so desperately.

She was becoming a woman, now, and it was little more than a child he had loved before. A child's fantasies he had bent before. Sometimes when she did stop, when she sensed him, when she heard the snick of his wings, he could see the hope and regret in her eyes. He wondered, perhaps, if his Sarah would come to him. Come, before she forgot completely...

He breathed deep, feeling the now-familiar stabbing sensation within his breast that made it difficult to breathe. Oh, Gods, it was getting worse by the day!

Painfully, he gathered up a crystal, and leaned back to gaze into it. Surely and thankfully, there she was, standing in the mirror and thinking of him even as he thought of her. It had been so long since the last time she looked, who knew when she might look again? Who knew how weak he might be when the time came? Waiting was over... it had to be now. Gathering what strength he had left, he pushed out at her, giving it everything he had left. He spoke her name, commanding, pleading.

"Oh, Sarah..."

How absurd it was to desire something so much. How absurd to offer everything... how absurd... how absurd that he should be reduced to this.

Before everything went black, he thought, or perhaps imagined, that she spoke his name in return.


	2. Falling

((A/N: Jareth is a dark character at the moment. Things are not right in his Kingdom, and neither is he. Just a reminder that this fic is rated 'M' for a reason, so if dark themes offend, I'd skip these upcoming chapters.))

It had been a long time since she had last tried the mirror. She had called and called.

" _Should you need us..._ "

She needed them. She had no response. She hadn't heard the sound of a voice from beyond the veil... everything from that side had been silent for months and months, and what's more, the occasional flap of wings never followed her through her wintry walks any more. Friends who were her only friends were oddly absent, and it had never been so long between conversations.

Her dreams had been troubled. She saw images almost every night of an owl with broken wings, flopping helplessly on the ground while snow puffed in a circle around it, eventually obscuring the poor creature from her view altogether. It tried and tried to fly, but the snowy whirlwind coupled with it's broken wings stifled it again and again. Sometimes she saw images of a bumpy little man listlessly wandering the tattered remains of a garden, while beetle-black winged bodies twisted and writhed a ragged and jerky dance around his head. She knew these things wanted to *hurt* the little man, they wanted to hurt everything, because the terrible buzzing of their own wings echoed inside their simple little minds, driving out simple little thoughts. Some of them, she knew, were dropping dead of exhaustion. They were forgetting to find food because the buzzing that filled their little heads just wouldn't *stop*. They knew if it would stop, they could remember how to eat, how to breathe, how to *hurt* this little man. They knew if they could just hurt this man, everything would be better.

She saw a hulking, horned figure calling and calling to the landscape, desperately trying to regain something that had been lost to no avail. Every day this creature called and called, lost and lonely, trying to fill a void that was left by the loss of something he couldn't remember.

These dreams also brought a certainty that somewhere, there was a tiny, fuzzy little knight, desperately wandering the nightly fog, this oppressive and confined and unnatural fog. This poor little knight was now without purpose, and with this final knowledge, Sarah keened herself awake each night, waking herself with the tangible sense of loss. It was as if the loss were something she could feel in the empty bed beside her, pulling up each hair on the back of her neck with a thousand invisible strings.

These dreams disturbed and frightened her, because she often felt that nothing from this loss could ever be regained. She knew if she could just help...

That evening, however, was different. She heard her name, finally, but it was strained, faint, and distorted. It sounded just as desperate as her dreams had been. Perhaps she had imagined it? Cautiously, she made her way to the mirror, and pushed her anxiety to the side to focus on the task at hand. She had never been a coward. Over the years, she had changed a great deal, but that much hadn't.

Slowly, still not quite convinced that this wasn't a new part of her usual dreams, she reached out to touch the mirror. She expected to feel something beyond the unyielding glass. Perhaps it would ripple like water, perhaps it would be warm. But... nothing ever responded to her touch there, did it? No, her power had always been her words.

She closed her eyes shut tight, and was struck by a moment of panic when she realized that she didn't remember their names. She was forgetting...

"Hoggle!" She cried out finally, face pink with concentration. "Ludo? Didy... Sir Didy..." Oh, why couldn't she remember?! No change in the mirror or her surroundings. She sighed, straightened herself, smoothed out her shirt, and tried again the names she remembered, louder and more assured. She tried to push every ounce of want, need, and belief into those words, attempting to force her way past that barrier.

Nothing.

" _Sarah..._ "

She heard her name, sounding as jagged as the glass of the mirror would be if it broke at her feet. It pulled and tickled at the back of her mind. With a soft gasp of recognition, she now knew who to respond to. Gathering her courage and the one name she never had trouble remembering, she closed her eyes once more and whispered to the mirror.

"Jareth..." His name spilled from her lips with endless guilt and longing. "Jareth, please... I wish I could see you. Jareth, I wish to come home."

And she was falling, falling into a muggy nothing that wouldn't let her breathe.


	3. As Ever, Pet

"You..." She heard a voice above her before she could even begin to register her surroundings, or imagine how she'd gotten there. She was lying on something hard, and she was *barely* able to register that much, because the energy in the area had become suddenly suffocating. Sarah tried to tug the collar of her blouse to give herself more breathing room, only to be startled by the heaviness of her limbs.

She was about to call out to the voice, teetering on the edge of asking for assistance, when she felt a vicious tug on her waist-long plait. She cried out, unable to resist as the hand wrapped her hair around it's gloved fist and *yanked*.

"Get up, get up, get UP!"

Sarah felt a glimmer of recognition at the sound of the voice, when she was pulled to her feet by her braid, spitting some half-formed protest before it was cut off by a cry of pain.

"Why, girl, HOW are you here?! You're real, I can feel you." A masculine voice snarled into her ear, coupled with a strong masculine form bracing her wobbly, teetering body against it's own. Despite the intimacy of the position they were in, she felt anything but intimate. She was frightened. Somewhere in her muddled thoughts she knew that she just needed to remember. She needed to speak the name of the violent man in the room and he would release her.

"I d-don't know... l-let go... hurts..." She stammered weakly, startled by how rough her voice sounded and how dry her throat was.

The deep voice gave an unhinged laugh. That laugh didn't harbor any humor... it was far more terrifying than the careless way he whipped her to and fro by her hair. "Oh, it *hurts*, does it, my girl? Is Sarah Williams going to lecture me on *pain*?!" The hysterical voice demanded.

Were she in her right mind, she might have retorted that she was in no condition to lecture anyone, but the fist dragging her about by the skull made it difficult to think. In fact, she told herself, everything was difficult to think about. Sarah Williams, yes, that was her, but beyond that she was certain of nothing.

"Please!" She cried out in that rough, whispy voice. "Let go!"

That same unhinged laugh, a laugh tinged with breaking glass, sounded in her ear, making her break out in a rash of gooseflesh. "As ever, my girl, your wish is my command." He whipped her around, and she caught sight of a large chair seconds before he dashed her effortlessly against it. Her head collided with the edge of something that appeared to be a long curl of ivory, and she cried out as her vision swam and the edges of the world turned slightly grey. She felt something hot and liquid creeping with tickling fingers toward her eye, but before this could be properly processed, the chair began to burn at the exposed skin of her arms. She shrieked in that dry voice, and scrabbled away from the chair, crashing onto the stone floor.

"Don't you like my throne, Pet?" She looked up at the lilting voice, finally able to face her abuser. She gasped at what she saw. A cascade of straw-colored silk framed an angular and furious face, where two mismatched chips of ice seemed set in the middle. All of this topped a too-slender figure shrouded in black and grey fabric that made it difficult to tell where man stopped and robes began. More startling than his harsh appearance and the madness in his ice-chip eyes was the aura of crackling energy that seemed to ebb and flow wildly around him. It was so powerful, this aura, and so unchecked, that she could almost see it. She had a fleeting thought that she really ought to know who this was, but as he descended upon her again, all thought was gone.

"There was a time," He flourished grandly to the room at large as he spoke to her, "When you might have had one like it! One upon which you could sit without discomfort, one offered freely and with more love and adoration than most human girls could even *stand*!"

With each word, the man grew slowly and menacingly closer, his eyes promising her pain.

"Beneath your fingertips, you would have felt every billow of air, each cadence of each creature, tuned with a heartbeat rhythm. Mine... yours... it wouldn't' have mattered." He seemed to be speaking half to himself now, as if he had forgotten she were even there. "You would have made sport of the stars, my Pet." He said, staring at the throne now rather than her.

One gloved hand moved upwards, and he began tapping his chin thoughtfully. "You would have made slaves of kings. Your rule, your precedent would have been complete, effortless. Any command that came from your lips would be nothing less than law, and we would have *thrived*!" He was growing angrier and more animated once more.

"But LOOK!" He descended upon her with unnatural speed, snatched her up once more by her braid, yankd her to her feet, and marched her to a nearby window. She closed her eyes and prepared herself... she thought for sure he was going to toss her out of it, as effortlessly as he would toss a rag doll. "Look what you've done, Sarah!"

She looked, helpless to disobey. There was little to be seen but a vast, swirling mist in perpetual, unnatural twilight. She didn't understand how she knew that this was wrong, but it felt wrong.

"Please, water, please..." Her heart hammered, her throat more dry than ever before in her life. "Can't think, I can't think... I just need to think. I just need... water..."

There was a pause, an intake of breath from the man behind her. "Water." He spoke as if it were a rather confusing notion, but she soon found herself once more manipulated by her hair. She made a wild mental note to never plait her hair again, but the thought was swept away as the room spun into a blur and she found herself pitched headfirst into something very cold and very wet. In her shock, she inhaled, and came up spluttering. Pulling back and shaking errant strands of soaked hair from her face, she registered that she had been plunged into a barrel of crisp water.

"As ever, Pet, your wish is my command." That voice said, almost affectionate.

She ignored it, dipped back down into the barrel, mentally swatted any notion of pride aside, and slurped water like an animal.

Finally sated, she tossed her hair back in an arc of droplets that shimmered in the firelit room, and she enjoyed the mind-clearing coldness of the water. He was behind her once again, not touching her, staring as though she *were* an animal. An animal with uncertain intent, a potentially vicious and poisonous animal.

"Please, can you just tell me what's going on, Mister?" She asked finally.

"MY LORD!" He shouted, voice full volume and full force. She shrank away.

"Your Majesty! My KING! Sir, Sire, or..." He gave her a small, wicked smile, and she found that the sudden transformation more disturbing than his fury alone... and not only because the effect of his smile was alarmingly charming to her. "Master... to you, my Pet." At that, she blushed furiously, heat suddenly slamming into the skin that had been chilled by the water. He pierced her with a stare, and hidden within it was something dark and unstable that she didn't want to even attempt putting a name to.

"You, girl, may call me any of these things, but you WILL address me in accordance to my position."

Something flickered, almost pleasantly in the back of her mind, and her words were rushing forth before she could even frame the thoughts around them. "Can't I just call you Jar-" The rest of the name was stifled beneath a gloved hand as he cupped her mouth viciously.

"NO!" He shouted.

The recognition was gone as quickly as it had flickered into existence, and she cried out in pain as his fingers mashed her lips against her teeth until she tasted copper. The gloved hand released her, slowly and deliberately tracing her jawline as it slipped away. "No, girl, you must earn that right." His voice took on a hint of breathiness, and as she stared back into his eyes unable to look away, she felt herself growing inexplicably sleepy.


	4. Shadows

((For those of you who left reviews and PMs regarding confusion about why Sarah can recall things in the first chapter, but not once she's actually *with* Jareth, it will be explained more thoroughly in upcoming chapters. Rest assured that her lapses in memory are intentional, not a continuity error on my part.

As for where the heck I've been, well... Homeless, actually. Finally indoors now and healthy, happy, and most importantly, with a laptop! This will be a fairly short chapter, but I will make it up to those of you still reading, promise!

By the way, we all miss our Goblin King... hope this story does him proud.

I'd like to say thank you to readers still with me. ))

Sarah awoke on something soft and comfortable, and she felt something furling and unfurling in her hair, pressing and pulling gently on her scalp. Her admittedly muddled mind flashed images of twisting, undulating serpents, and she swatted at the thing in a panic.

She was surprised at first when she encountered a hand instead of a snake, and she turned to see a face framed by unkempt, sand colored hair.

"I can't keep you." The man said softly. There were tears streaming down his strikingly angular cheeks, leaking from mismatched eyes. A familiarity that had been nagging at her since she found herself here flickered again in the recesses of her mind, but she still couldn't quite remember.

She knew him. She just couldn't remember why she knew him.

"I should think not." She finally replied, slightly disturbed by the rasp that tinged her voice. "Even if you weren't a stranger, I don't fancy myself being 'kept' by anyone."

She almost regretted her words when the man's lower lip began to tremble, his eyes crinkling as he broke before her eyes.

"Your hair has gotten so long." He told her in a trembling baritone, reaching out again to touch her. She realised with an inexplicable thrill that he had taken one of his gloves off to toy with her locks as she slept. "It suits you." He twisted another thick strand between his fingers, and pressed it against his lips. It came back damp. She felt a stab of pity for the man. She didn't know what to say, how to respond.

"You've been unfaithful." He announced suddenly, his tears halting as quickly as having turned off a tap. He stood and began pacing around the bed so fluently that it could almost have been a solitary dance. She sat up to watch him, equal parts enthralled by his elegance and dark, mad beauty, and wary of his obvious madness.

"I... haven't been unfaithful." She ventured carefully. She felt a little better than she had when she'd first ended up here. Though she still hadn't a clear idea how or where she was, she figured she ought to make the best of it now that she was. That included trying to reason with her captor. "I haven't."

"Liar." He said. The word was accusing and agonized, but it was also soft, which was a vast improvement to being tossed about by her plait. "You're lying. You have been unfaithful. You don't even know it, but yes. Yes, you've been unfaithful... and you've brought them with you, here, to my kingdom."

"What? What have I brought?"

He glanced at her, giving a toss of his head and making a 'tsk' sound. He otherwise ignored her question as if she hadn't spoken at all.

"Tell me what's going on." She was comforted by the forcefulness of her own voice.

He finally stopped pacing, and his eyes fell on her. "You are covered in shadows. They're all over you. They tend to you, they whisper to you. And so, I... I can't keep you, Sarah."

He sank to his knees before the bed, and held her gaze. His head tilted, and her breath hitched. She stared back, thinking in a vague sort of way how easy it would be to lose herself in those eyes. "Until the end of time." He murmured. "Sweet Sarah."

Sarah felt that sleepiness begin to steal over her again. "Don't-" she managed before she slipped away again.

She came to more slowly this time. She registered the scent of earth, it overpowered her other foggy senses. It wasn't right. Decay, decay and darkness. She forced herself to sit upright. A soft skittering sound, like something on four small legs met her ears. Adrenaline flooded her.

"Where am I?" She whispered, her eyes flicking back and forth to see only dark, swirling mists. "Where in the name of all the Gods am I?"


	5. Recognition

The first thing that registered was the odor and taste of earth. It was wrong, decaying. That swirling, unnatural mist roiled around her vulnerable body, chilling her more deeply than she'd ever been, even though her body didn't feel particularly cold. It was a chill that came from inside her, from the back of her mind.  
She stretched herself slowly, pulling up to her hands and knees. Her body was a little stiff, making her wonder how long she had been outside. That didn't matter, what mattered was her location and her situation. She drew herself into a standing position with that thought, and gazed around to take stock of her surroundings.  
It was dark, but her eyes were adjusting to it well enough to see a little. She could only see so far in any direction before everything went pitch black, but when she looked directly behind her, it was like someone had dropped a wall in her way. She couldn't locate any structures, so she knew that wherever and however she had been dropped off, it was away from that madman and his admittedly comfortable bed.

Something about that blankness at her back was inexplicably nerve-wracking. She stole another glance at it before taking a few tentative steps away. Finding that all of her limbs worked, she could move, and her head was pretty clear, she decided to pick a direction and walk until she found something worth finding. There was no other option that she could think of. Her surroundings were unfamiliar, dark, and potentially dangerous, and the longer she stayed in one spot the more she felt like a big target was strapped to her back.

"What else is there to do?" She asked aloud, eyes scanning the dark landscape. It was beyond eerie. That mist was so dense that she couldn't see her feet, and that made her both more nervous and irritated. She had no idea what might go skittering over her shoes in the mist.

"Well, feet... even though I can't see you, you still have a job. Let's go. South, I think." As soon as she began to walk, she felt better. Having something to do, no matter how bleak, seemed to help.

She felt more or less alright, talking out loud to herself here and there to break the unnatural silence and keep herself sane. The surrounding air seemed to deaden all sound, making her words sound dull and thick and her footsteps almost nonexistent. The only bright spot in her otherwise desolate situation was that she finally began making out differences in the scenery, even though it was difficult to see much. She caught glimpses of trees and even a shrubbery. She saw what may have been a stone fountain.

Still, the only noises she made out were all unnerving. Occasional scuffling caused her to stop dead in her tracks with every hair on her body standing to attention and her nerves singing. Worse yet were the whispers. Those could almost be taken for tricks of her overstimulated imagination at first, barely there. Soon, though, they became far more prominent, sometimes punctuated by harsh, scratchy giggles. She almost wanted to call out to the voices, but seemed unable to gather the courage to bring that sort of attention to herself. She kept her head down, astounded by her own serenity in this place.

The farther southward she wandered (at least, she *hoped* it was southward), the more familiar things seemed. She ignored the whispering, wandering not-voices and focused on what was in her head. Thoughts and fleeting memories flicked through her mind like someone was rapidly thumbing through them. She could only catch flashes of things as they appeared and then gave way instantly to the next. Every so often she would catch sight of something in the immediate area that would trigger more flashes of incomplete memory.

 _"No, I said 'ello', but that's close enough."_  
 _"I thought they did nice things, like granting wishes."  
_  
She shook these away when they came. They unsettled her even more than that blank wall behind her.  
She lost track of the time with unreasonable ease. She didn't even know if days or minutes were passing, and found that she didn't care. She had no idea how or where to find food, but she didn't feel hungry, or thirsty for that matter. She knew in some vague way that she was hopelessly lost, but refused to allow that train of thought to fully form in her mind. She just let her instinct carry her, because what other options did she have?

She stopped in her tracks. There was something moving ahead of her. Something humanoid. Fear and excitement warred within her. There was definitely something wrong with this place, something that had gone bad, and she was afraid that whatever that shape was in front of her might want to do her harm, but she was desperate for some contact. She was desperate for some guidance, and there was every chance this figure knew more about her whereabouts than she did.  
She had been wandering alone and aimless long enough that she was going a little mad. Cautiously, balling her hands into fists in case she had to use them, she called out to it.

"Hello?" The word fell dead in the dense air. She tried again, louder. "Hello?!"

The little man turned toward her, and she heard a faint response. Adrenaline burst into her body, and she took off running toward the figure. It was friendly!

"Hello! Don't leave, hold on! I'm coming to you!" The figure came closer and closer until they were almost face to face. It was a bumpy little man.

"There you are!" The man cried. "We've been looking all over for you!" He sounded, of all things, irritated.  
Something was familiar, achingly familiar. She screwed her face up and tried to grasp at the threads of recognition floating in her mind.  
"Well don't just stand there, we've got stuff to do!" He stared at her like she was an idiot. Then...

"Hoggle!" She screeched uncontrollably. Memories began flooding back and she threw herself onto him.

 _ **((A/N: Somehow this is the most difficult chapter I've written yet. I have no idea why, but I've been working on this for like a week and a half. Lol.**_  
 _ **I'm going to try and update twice a week from here, because most of the chapters from here on in are already finished and just need some fleshing out and proofreading. As always, thanks for sticking around, readers! I know my updates have been very spotty, but it'll be better from here on in.**_  
 _ **As always (again), I do all my own editing, proofreading, and spellchecking, so all errors are my own fault.))**_


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